I like the shot with the lady and gent, for Portra its quite a rich colour with skin-tones reminiscent of Fuji RDP.About me; Although I use both digital and film, I prefer film for most 'projects' as the whole image making chain is more satisfying for me.I think that generally the mis-information on some site about film and the use of film are actually quite shocking.We have people who seem to be out to prove 'digital is better' film has poor colour, lower resolution, is binary with only black specs and clear base etc.

In reality it's all about achieving your personal vision, whatever the chosen mediumP

I agree with Photo_Utopia, many places often mistake image quality as pure resolution. I bet most film users just like the look of the stuff printed, and don't shoot res charts!

I have not done much testing, but film doesn't stack up badly res wise compared to digital. Only once did I take my 6mp DSLR out and film. I just used up some bog standard ISO 200 print film, and it thrashed the pants off of the DSLR in just about every dept. Rather goes against the thinking of some places when they do testing on stuff like this.

And I have yet to see a digital shot show the uber fine levels of tonal variations, that film does. Despite the so called tech experts suggesting digital colours are better and more accurate. In my own experience, the real world, leaving aside the cost and time element of film, digital files require far more work in pp to even attempt to get near the level that film is at already.

It is IMO easier to just pick film for some subjects. Digital has a place, so does film, both are great in many ways.

But what I mostly like about neg film is the good highlight headroom, which is pretty poor on digital. I spend more time working the composition, than worrying about highlights shot to bits. This is the bane of digital, so poor in the highlight area, it isnt very funny.

Barry I agree very much. Shooting res charts and newspapers just strikes me as missing the whole point of photography. Does anyone think Helmut Newton ever shot charts to see what copy of what lens was the sharpest.

And since I have been shooting more film I have indeed rediscovered the print. I have a hard time not filling wall after wall with 17x22 prints from 50mb drum scans. Some of them I just stare at, disbelieving that I actually created these photographs.

Anyway here is another, and this is just from an under 10mb roll scan. Mamiya 645AFDII, 80mm AF lens, Tri-X 400. The drum scan should be pretty spectacular.

I donīt know if it can still be found anywhere or processed, but if you can get your mits on some Kodachrome 64, shoot your usual subject(s) and then scan and convert to black and white through channel mixer, you will be stunned by the magnificent sense of beauty that the skin tones take on.

By far the best skin tones I ever got, even compared with the results from the many years when I shot b/w film almost every day. Having said that, a lot depends on the material you use for printmaking... No easy answers, ever.

Rob Kodachrome is a black and white film that has the colours added at the development stage, the correct term is non substantive as it has no colour couplers but rather uses 3 layers of mono emulsion sensitive to different parts of the visual spectrum.If you can't find a mono film that gives you a good skin tone it may well be that you need to try a different film/dev combo.I get pretty good skin tones with most films in Rodinal at 1:50

This is with T-Max 400 although I feel Ilford Delta is just a good, strange as Rodinal is not first choice for tabular grain films by conventional wisdom.

With respect to a previous post, Iīm not saying that I canīt get good results from original b/w film at all; Iīm just saying that though I was perfectly happy using them when I was in the business, using Kodachrome slides of original colour subjects from the same era has given me skin texture that I find wonderful. Thatīs not to say that the same shots, had they been done on b/w material wouldnīt have looked as good as I wanted, itīs that the shots Iīm working with are already in colour and will never happen again. And they still give me everything Iīd have expected from b/w material too.

However, itīs academic: I no longer have a darkroom and never again will. Life, you see, has itīs own way of imposing on the person and his choices.

With respect to a previous post, Iīm not saying that I canīt get good results from original b/w film at all; Iīm just saying that though I was perfectly happy using them when I was in the business, using Kodachrome slides of original colour subjects from the same era has given me skin texture that I find wonderful. Thatīs not to say that the same shots, had they been done on b/w material wouldnīt have looked as good as I wanted, itīs that the shots Iīm working with are already in colour and will never happen again. And they still give me everything Iīd have expected from b/w material too.

However, itīs academic: I no longer have a darkroom and never again will. Life, you see, has itīs own way of imposing on the person and his choices.

Sorry Rob for the misunderstanding, my point is that Kodachrome IS a B&W film, when you load it and use it to all purposes you are using a mono (with narrow latitude) emulsion.I have been working on a series of colour images from B&W film here is an image taken on Agfa APX 100:

With the right subject, you can get pretty accurate colour not unlike KR64. It is a time consuming process and one that doesn't lend itself to fast moving subjects I call it a Trichrome.